Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

Pete Turnbull pete at dunnington.plus.com
Wed May 27 06:35:09 CDT 2020


On 27/05/2020 11:55, Peter Corlett via cctalk wrote:
> It's better now, though. Price differences can be explained by delivery costs,
> import duties, and VAT/sales tax. And in the case of 1977, middlemen who
> exploit the difficulty in importing stuff oneself.
> 
> The USA is some sort of gravity well when it comes to postage. It's cheap-ish
> to send stuff to it, but unreasonably expensive to send stuff from there. So
> for a product actually made in the USA, USPS, UPS, etc all conspire to ratchet
> the price up.

Very often, yes.  I see that most notably when I look at huge shipping 
charges for stuff on eBay.co.uk or from the Global Store as seen on 
Amazon.co.uk.  Yet it's not always the case.  Recently I needed a part 
for a Weller soldering station originally bought from Farnell in the UK. 
  They're a Weller agent, only a few tens of miles from where I live, so 
the logical place to look.  Nevertheless, it was almost 40% cheaper to 
buy the part from Digikey, including UPS shipping from Texas to my 
address in the the UK, where it arrived in 36 hours.

-- 
Pete
Pete Turnbull


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